Blog - Cycling Things

Over the weekend, Riddell — which bills itself as the “official helmet of the NFL” — was found partially culpable in the maiming of a Colorado high school player.

A jury found the sports equipment manufacturer 27 per cent responsible for a 2008 incident in which
then-teenager Rhett Ridolfi suffered brain damage and partial, permanent paralysis during a practice.
That 27 per cent amounts to $3.1 million (U.S.) of a total $11.5 million award.

In the aftermath, Riddell, like everyone else with a pecuniary interest in the head-injury debate, was left
talking up the trees in the hopes no one notices the forest.

“(W)e are pleased the jury determined that Riddell’s helmet was not defective in any way,” the company said in a statement.

This is the essential disconnect in the debate, and in the perception of helmets generally. Whether
effective or not, helmets aren’t primarily a defence against injury. They are most importantly a warning
that any activity that requires you to wear one is likely to lead to tears.

This commonsensical approach was more apparent to Ridolfi’s lawyer, Frank Azar.

He’s representing a dozen or more former NFL players in their cases against Riddell. That’s a drop
amongst thousands more suing the league for downplaying the risks and failing to prevent the cranial
damage that ensued.

“Riddell set this phony-baloney standard about concussion risk,” Azar told the
Denver Business Journal. “If they had told the truth, and said, ‘You have a 50 percent change of getting a
concussion with this helmet,’ what mother or father would let their kid play football in a Riddell helmet?
And you can still buy this helmet today.”

He’s right in assuming facts should scare people off football. He’s wrong in assuming anyone gives a damn
about facts.

Riddell’s problem — and, by extension, that of the NFL and every other league that mandates helmet use
— is that helmets only mitigate the damage you’re doing to your head. They operate on the same theory
that suggests mummifying yourself in bubble wrap and jumping out a third-storey window should be a
fun way to pass an afternoon.

The problem isn’t the impact per se. It’s the reaction of the gelatinous goo inside you sloshing around after
the impact. No amount of padding can completely defray that risk.

Increasingly, what helmets have become are talismans. Riddell (and every other manufacturer)
understands that no space-age resin, no lightweight polymer, no amount of high-tech bafflegab is going to
fully protect you if you nail something hard and fast at just the wrong angle. They manufacture the illusion
of full protection, with a lot of small print underneath that amounts to “This guarantee should not be
understood as a guarantee.”

What they’re selling is witchcraft.

The fault here does not lie with the manufacturers. It lies somewhere within the culture. For reasons we
can’t quite put our finger on, Americans have chosen to painfully embrace the most dangerous general-
participation sport in the world.

As Jerry Seinfeld once suggested, football and its ilk aren’t really sports. They’re part of a “head-cracking
lifestyle.”

He continues: “The only thing dumber than the helmet is the helmet law, the point of which is to protect a
brain that is functioning so poorly, it’s not even trying to stop the cracking of the head that it’s in.”

There is very little difference between wearing a helmet and wearing a piece of the true cross. Both are
faith objects.

The power of any talisman is that its protective aura is self-reinforcing. As long as you aren’t hurt while
you’re wearing it, one presumes the talisman takes the credit. The longer that trend continues, the more powerful the juju. Instead, the real hero is the less glamorous combination of good luck and statistical
probability.

We all know the surest way to protect against brain injury is to either engage in pastimes that A) don’t
require helmets or B) have adapted themselves to relatively safe, helmetless participation.

As usual, rugby stands out as the exemplar — a tackling sport that relies on fear to protect its players. Put
a helmet on a rugby player, that fear dissipates and with it any advantage on the concussion front.

With the helmet goes a misplaced sense of invincibility. Any hard shell around the body creates this false
impression. Hence, the number of suicidal idiots careening along the DVP on a given day. They wouldn’t
drive that way if you took the doors off their cars. Doing so would make them no less likely to die on front
impact.

If the only goal here is to prevent injury, then the answer is to get rid of helmets, along with the sports that
require them.

But that’s not the goal. The goal is to fool ourselves into believing we aren’t likely to get hurt. And so it’s
left to the legal and medical communities to inadequately tidy up the messes created by our magical
thinking.